CAN GOD SATISFICE?

Klaas J. Kraay, Ryerson University

This paper appears in American Philosophical Quarterly 50 (2013): 399-410. The published
version can be found online at: http://apq.press.illinois.edu/50/4/kraay.html.

Three very prominent arguments for atheism are (1) the argument from sub-optimality, (2) the
problem of no best world, and (3) the evidential argument from gratuitous evil. To date, it has
not sufficiently been appreciated that several important criticisms of these arguments have all
relied on a shared strategy. Although the details vary, the core of this strategy is to concede that
God either cannot or need not achieve the best outcome in the relevant choice situation, but to
insist that God must and can achieve an outcome that is good enough. In short, this strategy
invokes divine satisficing in response to these arguments for atheism. (The widespread use of
this strategy may have gone unnoticed because the appeal to divine satisficing is usually
implicit.) In sections 1-3, the three arguments for atheism will be set out, and it will be shown
that the relevant replies all employ this shared strategy. Section 4 will show that those who
invoke divine satisficing have failed to establish that this is a coherent notion. Accordingly, these
replies to three important arguments for atheism are, at present, incomplete.

1. THE ARGUMENT FROM SUB-OPTIMALITY

Suppose that there is a unique best of all possible worlds. Against this ontological backdrop, the
following argument for atheism has been proposed:

(1) If God exists, the actual world is the best possible world.
(2) Probably, the actual world is not the best possible world.
(3) Therefore, probably, God does not exist.

Robert Adams (1972) offers an indirect argument against (1), by criticizing two claims that
might be thought to support it:
1


(Q) A creator would necessarily wrong someone (violate someones rights), or be less
kind to someone than a perfectly good moral agent must be, if he knowingly
actualized a less excellent world instead of the best that he could.

(R) Even if no one would be wronged or treated unkindly by the actualization of an
inferior world, the creators choice of an inferior world must manifest a defect of
character.

Adams argues that God could actualize a world with the following characteristics:

(S) none of the individual creatures in it would exist in the best of all possible worlds;

(T) none of the creatures in it has a life which is so miserable on the whole that it would
have been better for that creature if it had never existed; and

(U) every individual creature in the world is at least as happy on the whole as it would
have been in any other possible world in which it could have existed.
2
Against (Q), Adams thinks it obvious that if God were to actualize a world with characteristics
(S), (T), and (U), God would neither wrong anyone nor be less than perfectly kind to anyone.
Against (R), Adams claims that, far from manifesting a defect of character, Gods choice of an
inferior world could manifest the Judeo-Christian virtue of grace, which he defines as a
disposition to love which is not dependent on the merit of the person loved (97-8). Adams
indirect argument against (1) thus constitutes an implicit appeal to divine satisficing: Adams
believes that so long as God chooses a world that is good enough, God need not actualize the
best world.
2


2. THE PROBLEM OF NO BEST WORLD

Many contemporary philosophers, following Aquinas, have suggested that there is no best
possible world, but rather an infinite hierarchy of increasingly better worlds.
3
Against this
ontological backdrop, some philosophers have mounted an a priori argument for atheism.
4
This
argument can be expressed with reference to the following inconsistent set of propositions:

(NBW) For every world w, there is a better world, x.

(P1) If it is possible for the product of a world-actualizing action performed by
some being to have been better, then, ceteris paribus, it is possible for
that beings action to have been (morally or rationally) better.

(P2) If it is possible for the world-actualizing action performed by some being
to have been (morally or rationally) better, then, ceteris paribus, it is
possible for that being to have been better.

(G) There possibly exists a being who is essentially unsurpassable in power,
knowledge, goodness, and rationality.

Critics of theism have urged that since this set of propositions is inconsistent, and that since (P1)
and (P2) are plausible, defenders of (NBW) ought to reject (G). This amounts to an a priori
argument for the impossibility of an essentially unsurpassable God on (NBW), and it has come
to be called the problem of no best world.
Although they do not use the term satisficing, Daniel and Frances Howard-Snyder
(1994) implicitly invoke this notion in their response to the problem of no best world. They offer
a two-step model of Gods choice of a possible world on (NBW). God first identifies the objective
axiological threshold below which no world is worthy of actualization, and above which all
worlds are. God then selects from the latter group at random. Any world that results from this
process, the Howard-Snyders believe, is good enough. They grant that, no matter what God
does, he could always have created a better product by choosing a better world. But they deny
that Gods world-actualizing action, on this model, could have been improved. In short, they
deny (P1) by appeal to divine satisficing: God cannot choose a best world, but God must and can
select one that is good enough.
Timothy OConnor (2008, Chapter 5) also implicitly appeals to satisficing in his response
to the problem of no best world. According to OConnor, the world God selects for actualization
is a super-universe containing infinitely many universes, all of which exceed some objective
axiological threshold . OConnor holds that there is no best such super-universe, since there is
no highest transfinite cardinality that a set of threshold-surpassing universes can exhibit.
OConnor says that God may choose to create any such super-universe: they are all good
enough. Although God could always have created a better super-universe, OConnor says, it does
3
not follow that Gods world-actualizing action could have been better. So OConnor also deploys
satisficing against (P1).
Bruce Langtry (2008, 74-78) steers clear of randomizers and super-universes, but his
response to the problem of no best world explicitly invokes satisficing. Langtry asks what a
correct theory of morality should say about agents divine or otherwise who are forced to
choose one item from an infinite series of good and increasingly better outcomes. He answers:

It should recommend that they satisfice that is, that they select some good state
of affairs even though they could select a better one. Therefore it should not also
recommend, of each available good state of affairs, that they not select that one.
Therefore it should not declare that, whichever state of affairs they select, there is
at least one alternative member of the hierarchy such that selecting it would be a
morally better action (78).

Langtry similarly argues that a correct theory of rationality should recommend that agents in
such situations satisfice (76-7). In short, Langtry denies (P1) on the grounds that God must and
can satisfice by selecting a world that is surpassable, but good enough.
5

So, while the details differ, these three responses to the problem of no best world involve
the same strategy: they all concede that God cannot actualize the best possible world on (NBW),
but they all insist that God must and can satisfice by choosing a good enough world.
6
Before
turning to the next argument for atheism, it is worth noting that some critics of theism have
tacitly agreed that God may satisfice on (NBW). Perkins (1983, 246-8) and Elliot (1993) both
grant (NBW), and neither expresses any concerns about the idea that God can coherently be
thought to achieve an outcome that is surpassable, but good enough. Instead, both authors
argue, a posteriori, that the actual world is not good enough to be considered the result of an
unsurpassable beings action. In effect, this is an attempt to mount an evidential argument from
evil on the hypothesis of (NBW). Since this move does not directly engage the satisficing strategy
and, indeed, concedes its success it will be set aside in what follows.

3. THE EVIDENTIAL ARGUMENT FROM GRATUITOUS EVIL

The third argument for atheism is perhaps the most famous of all: the evidential argument from
gratuitous evil. Following Hasker (2010, 305), lets say that a token or type of evil is gratuitous if
and only if God, if he exists, antecedently knows he could prevent it in a way that would make
the world overall better.
7
The (probable) occurrence of gratuitous evil has been thought to
disconfirm theism in the following way:

(4) If God exists, no gratuitous evil occurs.
(5) Probably, gratuitous evil occurs.
(6) Therefore, probably, God does not exist.

A common response to this argument is to defend a model of our epistemic circumstances and
capacities according to which it is not reasonable to assert (5). This position has become known
as skeptical theism, and it has generated a large and very technical literature.
8
Defenders and
critics of this argument typically agree, however, that premise (4) is secure. And yet, a few
philosophers have attempted to resist (4). One of these is Peter van Inwagen, who, in a series of
important publications, defends the following no minimum amount claim:

(NMA) For any amount of evil that suffices for Gods purposes, there is some lesser
amount that would serve Gods purposes equally well.
9

4
As some commentators have noted, (NMA) might be thought to entail something most theists
take to be implausible: that Gods purposes would be served equally well with no evil whatsoever
(Jordan 2003, Schrynemakers 2007). But this is evidently not what van Inwagen intends.
10
It is
better to treat van Inwagen as asserting either that there is no minimum positive cardinality of
evil that suffices for Gods purposes, or else that there is no minimum positive ordinality of evil
that suffices for Gods purposes (or perhaps both).
11
van Inwagen thinks that (4) entails the
falsity of either construal of (NMA). But van Inwagen reasons in the opposite direction: from
(NMA), via modus tollens, to the denial of (4). In other words, van Inwagen thinks that since
God must permit some evil in order to achieve his purposes, and since there is no minimum
purpose-achieving amount for God to permit, God just has to draw the line somewhere. So long
as God prevents an adequate amount of gratuitous evil, the exact placement of this line is an
arbitrary matter.
12
No matter where God draws this line, some evil will be gratuitous, in which
case (4) can be resisted, and the evidential argument from gratuitous evil fails. If van Inwagens
argument is successful, the occurrence of gratuitous evil counts against neither Gods goodness
nor rationality.
Commentators on van Inwagens argument have generally not noticed that it constitutes
yet another implicit appeal to divine satisficing.
13
Since van Inwagen defends (NMA), he is
evidently committed to the view that the product of Gods action could always have been better
(2001, 69; 2006, 97). But he emphatically denies that Gods action could always have been
better (1988, 167; 2001, 73-4; 2006, 102-3).
14
So when van Inwagen says that God must draw
this arbitrary line, he is in fact suggesting that God must and can satisfice by preventing an
amount of gratuitous evil that is good enough and that God cannot be faulted for so doing.
The most common response to van Inwagens argument has been to tacitly concede that
God can, in principle, satisfice by preventing a good enough amount of gratuitous evil, but to
argue, a posteriori, that the amount of gratuitous evil in the world vastly exceeds what we would
expect to find, given theism.
15
This response is structurally similar to the claims of Perkins
(1983) and Elliot (1993), mentioned above in section 2. In this context, the result is a modified
evidential argument from gratuitous evil that appeals, not to the bare occurrence of gratuitous
evil, but to the quantity of gratuitous evil found in the actual world. This modified argument will
be set aside, however, for the sake of pursuing a direct response to van Inwagen, and to the other
authors who appeal to divine satisficing.
16


4. IS SATISFICING GOOD ENOUGH FOR GOD?

So, some important responses to three prominent arguments for atheism involve an explicit or
implicit appeal to divine satisficing. But is this move legitimate? The Howard-Snyders and
OConnor both invoke divine satisficing in their responses to the problem of no best world,
without showing that this notion is coherent. Indeed, since these authors assume (NBW), and do
not deny (P2), it seems that they intend to hold these claims fixed, and to deny (P1) by merely
insisting that (G) is true; namely, that God is possible. But of course (G) is precisely what the
problem of no best world means to deny, so it will not do to simply assume the truth of (G) in a
response: that is just to beg the question.
Things are different, however, when it comes to Adams response to the argument from
sub-optimality, Langtrys response to the problem of no best world, and van Inwagens response
to the evidential argument from gratuitous evil. All three authors appeal to human choice
situations to motivate their arguments. They all defend the propriety of satisficing in human
cases, and, after suggesting that the divine choice situation is relevantly similar, they conclude
explicitly (Langtry) or implicitly (Adams and van Inwagen) that satisficing ought to be deemed
an acceptable strategy for God. Here are representative samples of their analogies:

5
Adams considers the case of a man who decides to breed goldfish instead of more excellent
beings such as cats or dogs. Adams point is that the breeder is satisficing by choosing a good
enough species to breed, and that there is nothing immoral (or, one might add, irrational) in
so doing, even if the breeder could have chosen a more excellent species (1972, 329).

Langtry imagines a powerful being offering to prolong your life by a finite number of good
days. He concedes that there is no best choice for you to make (since you could always
choose a larger finite number), but insists that rationality requires you to satisfice by
selecting a number that secures an outcome that is good enough for you (2008, 76).

van Inwagen offers the following story: one thousand children have a disease that is fatal
unless treated with a sufficient dose of medicine. But the store of medicine is limited. If the
store is divided equally into one thousand units, all the children will die, since no individual
dose will be sufficient. So if the medicine is given to either none or all of the children, all will
die. Given this, van Inwagen argues, the medicine must be given to some and not all of the
children (2001, 78-9; 2006, 109-111). van Inwagens point is that those dispensing the
medicine should satisfice, and that so doing is both morally and rationally defensible.

The remainder of this paper raises some worries for this move from human to divine
satisficing.
17

To begin, it is worth briefly revisiting the pair of seminal papers in which Herbert Simon
introduced the concept of satisficing into the contemporary literature. He first argued that the
ideal rational agent postulated by economists is a dangerous fiction (1955). Given our
physiological and psychological limitations, no human being has enough information or
computational capacity to do what traditional optimizing or maximizing accounts of rationality
require: namely, to (1) identify every possible outcome of an action, to (2) determine the value of
each one, and (3) to assess the probability of each ones occurring. These requirements can be
avoided on the alternative, satisficing conception of rationality, on which the agent merely
roughly divides outcomes into satisfactory and unsatisfactory, and is permitted to select any
one of the former. While this paper concentrated on features of the agent, his subsequent paper
explored features of an agents choice environment which also motivate satisficing (Simon
1956). Simons emphasis was generally descriptive (1955, 104; 1956, 137), but he also suggested
that there may be normative implications (1955, 101).
Clearly, this kind of satisficing was devised specifically for human agents who are limited
in knowledge and power, and precisely because of those limitations. As Weirich (2004, 386)
notes, many decision theorists have followed Simon in this approach, in order better to model
bounded human rationality.
18
But of course it would be inappropriate to apply Simons notion
of satisficing to the divine case, since God, as traditionally understood, does not suffer from the
relevant limitations of knowledge and power.
Other philosophers have discussed a different notion of satisficing, sometimes called
genuine satisficing (Weber 2004; Henden 2007) or blatant satisficing (Mulgan 2001). This
kind of satisficing claims that a good enough option may be preferred to a better [and] it is
assumed that a better option is included in a set of options that have been enumerated and
evaluated (Swanton 1993, 33). It has been defended by prominent philosophers (e.g. Slote
1989), and has been employed in many areas of philosophy, and indeed in other disciplines.
This is surely the kind of satisficing at work in the analogies offered by Adams, Langtry, and van
Inwagen. This kind of satisficing can (at least potentially) be applied to the divine case, since in
the contexts of all three arguments for atheism discussed in this paper, it is generally taken for
granted that God knows that better alternatives exist, and indeed knows the axiological status of
each one.
6
Unfortunately, however, this kind of satisficing is enormously controversial. It has been
criticized in various ways by, for example, Byron (1998); Richardson (1994); Mulgan (2001);
Sorensen (1994, 2006); and Bradley (2006). Even idealized cases are contested. John Pollock
(1983) famously imagines an oenophiles deliberating about when to consume a bottle of
EverBetter wine, which improves with each passing day. Pollock thinks that the oenophile is
rationally permitted to satisfice, by drinking the wine on any day when it is good enough. But
Sorensen, for example, demurs, stating unambiguously that in this case, reason declares there
is no permissible alternative (2006, 214, and see also his 1994).
19
There is no space here to
examine all the moves in the complex debate about genuine satisficing. But it is worth pointing
out that there is something troubling about philosophers of religion responding to prominent
arguments for atheism by uncritically invoking divine satisficing, when it is highly controversial
whether human agents are (rationally or morally) permitted to satisfice.
Moreover, even if they were utterly uncontroversial in ordinary human cases, certain
important arguments for genuine satisficing employ ideas that are inapplicable to the divine
case. For example, Slote (1989) motivates satisficing by appeal to the virtue of moderation: one
may turn down an afternoon snack or a second serving or dessert either because one feels no
need for some additional good thing, or because one is perfectly satisfied as one is (10-20, 37-
40). In contrast, Slote characterizes the habitual optimizer as lacking in spontaneity or self-
sufficiency (42) and as excessively concerned with ones own interests (45). But surely the
defenders of divine satisficing would not likewise hold that God exhibits moderation by choosing
an outcome far worse than some other he could choose at no extra cost, or that God would lack
spontaneity or self-sufficiency, or exhibit excessive self-interest, in optimizing.
Here is another consideration deployed in favour of genuine human satisficing that is
inapplicable to the divine case. Slote (1989) and Weber (2004) both appeal to the existence of
multiple legitimate perspectives on a particular choice or option. In different ways, both
philosophers argue that an agent can be rational in choosing an option that is worse from one
legitimate perspective, since it is better from another legitimate perspective. They assume that
there is no overarching objective perspective from which to assess choices. Henden (2007) offers
compelling arguments against this line of thinking in ordinary human cases.
20
But even if
Henden is wrong about this, it is perfectly clear that this appeal to multiple perspectives cannot
be used to ground divine satisficing. After all, in their replies to all three arguments for atheism,
defenders of divine satisficing insist that God may select an outcome that is objectively and non-
perspectivally worse than others that might have been chosen.
Finally, then, lets suppose that arguments for genuine human satisficing are found (or
constructed) that are not only deemed successful, but that do not depend upon considerations
that are irrelevant or inapplicable to the divine case. Even this would not be enough to defeat
these three arguments for atheism, since there is an important difference between human cases
and the divine case that has not yet been brought out. Defences of genuine satisficing in human
cases seek to establish the rational or moral permissibility of choosing a worse option when a
better one is known to be available. Suppose that they succeed, and that they are deemed to
show, by analogy, that it is morally or rationally permissible for God to do likewise. The problem
remains that God is not like any other agent. God is not merely supposed to be excellent, or
superior, in goodness and rationality: God is taken to be essentially unsurpassable in these and
other respects. So, even if it is shown that it is rationally or morally permissible for God to
satisfice, this does not entail that Gods doing so is logically possible, given his nature.
21

To see why, recall that Slote (1989) urged that part of the appeal of satisficing is to open
up conceptual space for supererogation. Slote imagines a fountain of youth that emits life-and-
happiness-giving rays: the closer one stands to the fountain, the more life and happiness one
gains (111-123). But, of course, there is no closest possible position to the fountain, and so there
is no best choice. Slote claims that there are distances from the fountain that would be rationally
permissible i.e. not irrational to choose, even though closer distances could have been
7
selected instead. Slote thinks that we should reject the assumption that it is irrational to
knowingly forego a better alternative, since to take it for granted amounts denying the very
possibility of rational supererogation (115-16). On this view, however, two rational i.e. not
irrational agents can differ in overall status. As Slote says, this move opens a gap between
rationality and ideal rationality, (121) such that it may be possible for an act (choice) not to
count as irrational or bad though it is less than ideally rational, less than the best available
(115). A similar point can be made concerning morality: even if it is morally permissible for an
agent to satisfice, that agent could be surpassed by another who instead performs a morally
supererogatory act.
22
The upshot is obvious: establishing the rational or moral permissibility of
divine satisficing is insufficient for showing that God an essentially unsurpassable agent can
coherently be thought to satisfice.
In conclusion, then, those who wield divine satisficing against these three prominent
arguments for atheism owe us more. If they wish to argue analogically from human cases to
God, they must take care to rely only on arguments that do not depend upon features that are
inapplicable or irrelevant to the divine case. Given the present state of the literature on
satisficing, it appears that such arguments will be very controversial. Moreover, even if such
arguments were to succeed in establishing the rational or moral permissibility of divine
satisficing, this would not be enough: further work would still be needed to show that satisficing
is consistent with essential divine unsurpassability. Voltaire famously remarked that the perfect
is the enemy of the good. If divine satisficing proves unacceptable, then it will be fair to say that
the enmity is mutual: good enough is just not good enough for God.


8
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Previous versions of this paper were presented at the Western Canadian Philosophical
Association conference (Oct. 20, 2012) and at the American Philosophical Association Central
Division Meeting (Feb. 22, 2013). Thanks are due to my commentators on those occasions:
Philip Wiebe and D. Gene Witmer, respectively. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for
valuable comments on an earlier draft. Thanks are due to Michael Byron, Chris Dragos, Luke
Gelinas, Kirk Lougheed, Tim Mawson, Myron Penner, Roy Sorenson, and Paul Weirich for
helpful discussions of these issues. Finally, I am grateful to the John Templeton Foundation for
research support during the 2011-2012 and 2012-2013 academic years.

NOTES


1
Another way to reject (1), of course, is to deny that there is a best possible world. This view will be
discussed below, in section 2.

2
David Lewis (1993, note 16) seems to have been the first to explicitly refer to Adams God as a satisficer.

3
See, for example, Plantinga (1974, 61); Schlesinger (1977); and Swinburne (2004, 114-5.)

4
See, for example, Rowe (2004); Sobel (2004, 468-479); and Wielenberg (2004).

5
Langtry says more (than the Howard-Snyders and OConnor do) about what sort of world would be good
enough for God to actualize. He identifies the following sufficient condition: non-disappointing in the light
of the values that underlie the ranking of worlds, and moreover abundantly better than those worlds that
only just barely escape the accusation that they are disappointing (81). This is not a particularly
substantive elaboration.

6
An anonymous referee worries that this exposition of the Howard-Snyders, OConnor, and Langtry is
insufficiently charitable, since it fails to mention the following argument: while its true that for any
action of creation there is a better action, its also true that any action above a certain threshold is better
than withholding from creation. Hence, rationality (or the moral demands of creating good) requires that
God create something above a threshold. The referee is quite right that these authors are explicitly
committed to the view that it is better for God to actualize a threshold-surpassing world that includes a
created order than to refrain from creating entirely: see Howard-Snyder and Howard-Snyder 1994, 262;
OConnor 2008, 112; and Langtry 2008, 60. (If God refrains from creating, the result is the bare world,
which contains God and whatever other necessary existents there are.) But this claim is not essential to
their response to the problem of no best world. Suppose that these authors were to hold that the bare
world does surpass the threshold. They would then be committed to the view that God could choose the
bare world without impugning his status as an agent essentially unsurpassable in rationality and morality.
The core of these authors response to the problem of no best world is not the claim that God must create
something or other: it is, instead, the claim that God can coherently be thought to satisfice. As will be
shown in section 4, this claim is under-motivated.

7
The phrase could antecedently know, in Haskers formulation, has been replaced with antecedently
knows, since if God could know p, God knows p. Hasker here refines a definition of gratuitous evil offered
by Rhoda (2010, 287-289), which Rhoda, in turn, takes to be an improvement over William Rowes (1979)
conception. Other critics of Rowes account of gratuitousness include Alston (1991, 33-34) and van Inwagen
(1991, 164, note 11). Rhodas definition appears to be inspired by certain remarks by van Inwagen (2001, 69;
2006, 97).

8
For recent surveys of this terrain, see McBrayer (2010) and Dougherty (2011).

9

9
See van Inwagen (1988, 167). In later articulations of this claim, van Inwagen sometimes replaces evil
with cases of intense suffering, (1991, 164, note 11; 2006, 125), and sometimes with horrors (2001, 76;
2006, 106). But not all evils are cases of intense suffering, and, of course, not all cases of intense suffering
are evil. As for horrors, van Inwagen defines this term very loosely as certain particular very bad events.
(2006, 95). On this definition, it seems that not all evils are horrors, and it is not clear whether all horrors
are evils. For the purposes of criticizing van Inwagens appeal to satisficing, however, nothing depends
upon which formulation is used.
One further point is worth noting. van Inwagens account of Gods purposes is embedded within
two stories (the expanded free will defence and the anti-irregularity defence), both of which are claimed to
be true for all we know. (For the details of these stories, see van Inwagen 2006, 85-88, 113-134.) Strictly
speaking, then, van Inwagen thinks that NMA is epistemically possible, and that this suffices to show that a
neutral audience should suspend judgment concerning (4), in which case the argument from gratuitous evil
should be deemed a philosophical failure. (For van Inwagens account of philosophical success and failure,
see his 2006, 37-55.)

10
See van Inwagen (1988, 167-8; 2001, 73; and 2006, 106, note 4).

11
Jordan (2003) calls the former the Eleatic Assumption, and the latter the Ordinal Assumption.

12
van Inwagen discusses Gods drawing arbitrary lines in his 2001, 73, and his 2006, 102.

13
The only exception known to this author is Dragos (forthcoming). It is worth mentioning that a few
decades ago, George Schlesinger invoked satisficing his far less technical response to the problem of evil.
See, for example Schlesinger 1977, Chapters 9 and 10.

14
Accordingly, van Inwagens argument is structurally similar to the denials of (P1) defended by the
Howard-Snyders, OConnor, and Langtry.

15
See Drange (1998, 36-8); Russell (1996, 2004); Trakakis (2007, Chapter 12); and Fischer and Tognazzini
(2007). It is worth noting that van Inwagen anticipated this response (1988, 168).

16
Other criticisms of van Inwagen can be found in Stone (2003); Jordan (2003, 2011); and Schrynemakers
(2007). These will not be discussed here: space does not permit examining them, and, moreover, none of
them pertain to divine satisficing. They are, however, assessed by this author in a manuscript entitled
Peter van Inwagen on Gratuitous Evil.

17
Dragos (forthcoming) rightly chides Jordan (2011) for merely insisting without argument that van
Inwagens appeal to satisficing is illegitimate. My goal here is to provide at least some of the needed
argument.

18
He cites Skyrms (1990) and Rubenstein (1998) as examples. Schmidtz (2004) is another.

19
Dreier (2004) would agree. He defends a form of ethical satisficing, but argues that rational satisficing
is incoherent. Schmidtz (2004), who defends satisficing in non-idealized contexts, would also agree, since
he holds that ones choice is rational only if one does not recognize clearly better reasons for choosing
any of ones forgone alternatives (38).

20
Henden says that

in order for [an agents] reason as viewed from one of those perspectives, to be a rational
ground for choice, it is not sufficient that it is good enough from that perspective: she
must also have a reason for choosing to view her option from that perspective rather than
the other perspective, and that reason must be better, or at least not worse, than whatever
reasons she has for choosing to view it from the other perspective. Thus, the claim that
there is no all-encompassing perspective from which the satisficer may view her reasons,
10

amounts, I think, to abandoning the rational perspective altogether, since the rational
perspective, by definition, is the all-encompassing perspective (349).

Henden himself defends a further sense of satisficing de dicto genuine satisficing on which an
agent is rationally permitted to choose an option in cases where she knows that a better option is
available in her set of options, but does not know which one it is. Clearly, this account of
satisficing is also inapplicable to the divine case.

21
Thanks to Luke Gelinas for helping to make this point clear. Dustin Locke has suggested that instead of
invoking divine satisficing, the theist could instead pursue an alternate strategy: concede that God does
something morally impermissible, but deny that this counts against Gods unsurpassability. This strategy
might seem available in the no best world case, in which it could be argued God necessarily does
something morally impermissible. Space does not permit exploring this alternative.

22
William Rowe (1993, 228; 1999, 102-3; 2004, 82) appeals to this point in his criticism of Adams (1972).





























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